1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to detecting telecommunications fraud using intelligent predictive modeling systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
The rapid growth of the telecommunications industry has been accompanied by a correlative increase in telecommunications fraud. In some situations, however, a telecommunications service may be accessed or obtained in an undesirable fashion, e.g., by fraud, theft, or other nefarious activity, and unauthorized use may ensue. Providers take control actions to stop the provision of service when it is used in an undesirable fashion, e.g., by blocking compromised calling card numbers before service is fraudulently obtained. Unfortunately, by the time fraudulent use is detected and control actions can be taken, there has often already been a significant unauthorized use of the co-opted service, resulting in expense to the service provider. Accordingly, there is a need for a way to identify undesirable and unauthorized use of a service at an early juncture, in order to minimize the amount of loss resulting from that use.
Additionally, long distance carriers regularly lease bandwidth from other carriers. On such occasions, the call data record (CDR) for the call is often stripped of identifying information such as the number from where the call was made (“originating number”). This is done so that the long distance company leasing the bandwidth (the lessor) and completing the call on behalf of another carrier will not attempt to solicit business from the caller at the originating number, who is presumably not one of the lessor's subscribers, but the lessee's subscriber. Unfortunately, this frustrates fraud control efforts, since the information that has been stripped from the CDR would normally be used subsequently to detect fraud. As a result, there is substantial opportunity for fraud in these types of bandwidth exchanges. What is needed is a way to use the information stripped from the CDR to predict fraud, without divulging the stripped information to the provider providing the bandwidth.